Gamebook – Page 17 – Cybe's Website

Island of the Lizard King

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the seventh adventure, travelling to the Island of the Lizard King!

In 1982, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, founders of Games Workshop, released the book ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’. Intended as an introduction to tabletop role-playing games of the era, the book’s choose-your-own-adventure format mixed with simple dice-based combat proved massively successful, giving rise to a full series of books – Fighting Fantasy. With over 65 books in the series by a legion of authors and illustrators, the series’ legacy continues to this day. Come along with us as Cybe and co play through each one – with no prior knowledge, no hints or walkthroughs and no cheating!

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Aha! Aha! Ah-hah!

I don’t remember much about this book.

Everyone I have mentioned it to has very fond memories of it. And I remember getting a copy of it for Christmas one year, a year I also got Scorpion Swamp. I do remember that IofLK was damn good though, so it seems I agree with people who I’ve mentioned it to. It’s just that I’m damned if time hasn’t scrubbed the reasons as to WHY it was good from my mind. Let’s refresh my memory on it, shall we?

The game begins as I walk into Oyster Bay, a small fishing area which has recently been plagued by raids from the nearby titular island. Lizard men have been abducting the villagers and forcing them to work in mines, so I’ve been asked to go and rescue them. That’s a pretty good story, actually. I lucked out on my stamina roll, with a healthy 23. Skill and Luck are both a moderate 10.

An old friend gives you a ride on his boat to the island, and you promptly begin the adventure. The island boasts a wide array of landscapes visible even at this early stage – we can see forests, we’ve heard of the mines, and there’s an ominous smoking volcano in the distance. Will we live to see it up close? Me and my old friend, whose parents evidently hated him enough to name him Mungo, start to explore the beach. I find a ruined old hut, and while I’m on my way to check it out, Mungo manages to get crushed in the claws of a giant crab, thereby fulfilling the unwritten rule that any companion you find in a Fighting Fantasy game will quickly die a tragic and horrible death. I kill the crab, and Mungo gets to have a few last words before he dies. Tragic music plays.

Let us take a minute of silence to remember poor Mungo… Okay, enough of that. Digging through the hut, I find a note left by a previous inhabitant who tells me that many of the plants on the island are poisonous and that he advises drinking from a bottle of anti-potion that he left behind. I give this a few gulps and then make camp for the night. The book details the cacophony of wildlife noises on the island, and I’m impressed with how atmospheric it all seems.

I trudge my way through the jungle, hacking my way through the foliage with my trusty sword. Growing tired from making such slow head-way, I take a rest by one of the large trees. I awake some time later to find that the tree has ensnared me in its vines and is trying to eat me. Sometimes I wonder about why this kind of thing happens to me. Eaten by a carnivorous tree, not a noble way to go. I manage to pull myself free, and flee from the creature – right into the waiting clutches of a gang of headhunters.

If you’ve ever seen the end of ‘Cannibal Holocaust’, then you’ve a pretty good idea what’s about to happen. My stamina is beaten down to single-figures very easily. And even though I’m able to snarf down some meals over the course of the next few segments, I still feel rather sore. It was pretty rough to send three headhunters at me so early in the adventure. Still, it isn’t long before I manage to encounter a rather friendly figure, in the guise of a former prisoner who has taken to living in a small hut in a tree. I use ‘friendly’ in the loosest possible way, because the first thing he does is throw coconuts at me. He then demands that, to earn his friendship, I give him three of my meals, and in return he gives me a lock-pick and tells me that I should follow the general direction to the volcano. Would anyone mind if I threw him to the cannibals?

What follows is a series of very unusual and silly encounters which I manage to screw up in a variety of interesting ways, which I will hereby dub “Cybe touches and chews on weird stuff that he probably shouldn’t”. You could make a YouTube series out of it, if you had the time. The first one is a variety of weird mushrooms that I find growing on a log near a dragonfly I’d just cut in half. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to eat some weird mushrooms they find in the forest? I reach out to it, and it spits some spores into my face, which cause my skin to blister. The book then asks if I want to ignore this and hope it will go away, which is very sensible medical advice that I’m sure any doctor will recommend. “Oh, your face has bubbled up due to toxic fungus irradiation? Just ignore it, you’ll be fine. Or dead. But probably fine.”

Instead I decide to scrub my face with leaves, which seems to take away the pain and ease the sensation. Feeling much better, the book then asks if I still want to eat the toxic evil death mushroom. I say “Sure” and snarf some of it down. In a shocking twist, I am then violently sick – who’d have ever suspected THAT would happen? Coming to the next clearing, I find a strange glowing crystal standing alone in a patch of sunlight. There are no trees growing near it, so I do the sensible thing and whack it with my sword. My sword breaks, reducing my skill points. Not particularly surprising, really. I’m offered the change to touch the weird glowing crystal, and I decide that this will be a bit of a laugh. Rather than setting me on fire, it actually heals me. What an odd little item. I leave it where it is and continue on my way.

Soon after, I am confronted by a small crowd of pygmies. They shout at me and point blow-darts at me, but I’m not in the mood to try to fight them. Instead I offer them some items – namely a small ax I’d found earlier. It seems that they regard this item as a sacred artifact, perhaps the pygmy version of Excalibur or something similar. In return, they give me some berries. Not a fair deal, but at least I’m still alive and haven’t been shot with darts yet. If only they could give me something other than the gnawing feeling of awfulness at the racial representation of their characters, yeesh.

The ground starts to get wetter and more swamp-like as I progress, and I am soon wading through a deep marsh. I’m actually really enjoying the atmosphere of the book – the island isn’t huge, but you’ve got a real feeling of a believable landscape which fits together naturally. Soon though, it becomes apparent that I am not alone in the marsh – I am being followed by Gollum, determined to recover his lost ring. Well, not exactly Gollum, but it is a marsh hopper – a sinister little goblinoid who wants nothing more than to lure lost travelers into the waiting lairs of vicious monsters.

So I follow it. And guess where it takes me? If your answer was “into the lair of a vicious two-headed Hydra that eats you” then you might be right. There is a fight, but I don’t stand a realistic chance. I’ll be honest though, the actual mechanics of the fight is pretty good, as it’s one of those early instances where you have to fight two monsters (ie, both heads) at the same time. But with my damage to my skill I’d taken earlier, I just don’t stand a chance. I wonder if both heads wound up arguing over who got to eat me….So, let’s see what was lurking down the other path, shall we? The following parts are a little bit of an expansion to this post, because Island of the Lizard King is such a decent book, it deserves to be looked into a little bit more, eh?

Let’s say, for instance, we don’t follow the little marsh hopper. I stumbled through the marsh for a while and soon encountered a whole other monster – a slime-sucker. This creature was a large entity with long tripod-like legs, which keep its main body up out of the water itself, and large cupped hands to let it pull water into its mouth. The design for it is very unusual and quite interesting, and it is definitely the easier option. It’s still a very difficult fight, though – when I say it’s easier, I mean only barely.

The rest of the swamp is relatively easy. You are attacked by leeches, who serve only to diminish your stamina points further, and then you are free to enter the rocky hillside areas of the island. After avoiding a small avalanche, you stumble through the rocky hillside until you encounter a rock baring the warning ‘turn back’. Yes, this definitely means we’re getting closer to our destination. Warnings like that ALWAYS mean we’re on the right track.

In the sand of the ravine, you find a snuff box which contains a small note, helpfully wishing whoever finds the box some good fortune and telling them the location of the owner’s yacht. Which isn’t immediately helpful, but it’s good to know that we have a route to get off this island. This scene is quickly followed by a fight with a giant lizard, which lives up to the difficulty of the previous battles. This giant lizard sets the scene for the many lizard-themed battles that are going to appear shortly.

Shortly thereafter, you come across a small pool of water. Sitting to drink from it, you are attacked by a spitting toad. It’s a fairly easy fight for this book’s standard, so once it’s dead you have the option of pulling a large chest from the depths of the pool and looting its contents. The chest contains a ring of dizziness, a potion of clumsiness(think I can see why they locked these items in a box and threw them into a lake!), a bag of infinite holding, and a pair of boots. The boots don’t seem to do anything, so they are either boots of unknown magic powers that are revealed later, or boots of red-herringness.

We soon come to a river and, retrieving the raft that was mentioned in the snuffbox from its hiding place in the nearby shrubbery, we are able to steer our course up river. It’s moments like this which make Island of the Lizard King so classic. Remember that this was only the seventh Fighting Fantasy book made, and just look at how much of an area we’ve covered in terms of geography. We’re soon beset by a crocodile, and have to stab it to death.

It’s at this point when the atmosphere really starts to ramp up. We see an escaped prisoner, desperate to flee from the lizard men’s prisons. I take him onto the raft but, in his delirious state, he attacks me and I need to punch him into the river’s flowing currents. Before too long, the river brings you to a small village built of sticks and mud. Seeing a few lizard man guards, I realize that the mines are nearby, full of prisoners I need to rescue. Abandoning my raft, I soon find a tunnel that leads its way down into the mines. I manage to silence one of the lizard men guards, and find my way into a central tunnel.

Fighting my way through one of the lizard men, the prisoners are rallied to see me and quickly turn on their cruel taskmasters, ready to rise up and join me. They tear through several of the guards, and I ask that they lead me deep into the bowels of the tunnels so that I can rescue their fellow prisoners. Sadly as we run through the tunnels, I lose track of the group, and am unlucky enough to run head-first into another of the lizard man guards, who turns me into mincemeat. I die again, but having this time seen so much more of the island.

This is a really nice adventure. Loads of atmosphere and a very, very cool setting. I also really like the storyline, and I’d love to see how it pans out in the later parts of the adventure. This is one of the books that has been reprinted several times in later editions, and you can easily see why.

Cause of death: Crushed by the guards during a slave uprising.

Deathtrap Dungeon

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the sixth adventure, into the brutal Deathtrap Dungeon!

I asked a friend of mine what book I should review next. He said “One you can win”. So I chose this one purely to spite him. Deathtrap Dungeon is one of Livingstone’s babies, and has a large abundance of instant-death sections which will catch pretty much anyone off-guard. I also remember it being especially grueling and challenging even if you used the ‘keep your finger on the previous page’ cheat. The book was early in the Fighting Fantasy series, 6th if I remember right, and earned its place as a classic. I also remember a Playstation video game based on it released sometime in mid-to-late 1990s but the less we speak of that, the better. It’s aged worse than people who still make “did you assume my gender” jokes, and is only marginally less awful to experience.

The cheerful and happy Baron Sukumvit (well, of course he is, with a name like that) has built a dungeon filled with traps and monsters, and has been having great fun inviting people to come along and try to survive. I suppose that’s simply what people do when they have too much money and time on their hands. My character, evidently having nothing much to live for and deciding that jumping off a nearby cliff would be too painless, has decided to volunteer. His stats are fairly nice, with a skill of 9 and stamina of 15 – remember, that’s pretty buff when it comes to these games!

He also picked up a potion that will restore his stamina to its full level, which is bound to be very helpful against monsters that can swallow you whole. There really isn’t much of a storyline to this adventure – more of a vague excuse – but it’s enough to get the adventure going. “Hey, some crazy man built a dungeon that’ll make the Hunger Games look like playing on a bouncy castle, let’s go give it a shot!”

Immediately inside, I find a box that contains a couple gold coins, and I’m shocked it doesn’t explode or anything. Obviously Ian Livingstone, the author, is going easy on me. I head east at the crossroads, and find the path obstructed by a large fungus, which I attempt to cut through, only this DOES explore and injure me. Welp, that’s one lesson learned. The tunnel continues until it is quickly growing to be as hot as a furnace, and I am offered the chance to drink some ‘clear liquid’. Opting not to drink the obvious bottle of obviously-acid, I press on. Within a few moments, the entire tunnel decides that it’s just had enough and tries to incinerate me with strategically placed jets of heat and fire! Thankfully my high skill ensures I’m able to get through the tunnel without roasting like a Christmas turkey.

I’m able to grab a coil of rope from a nearby room, and am promptly beset by orcs. Although I am eventually victorious over the group, they’re able to knock my sword from my hand which seriously handicaps my skill score. I lose a full 10 stamina in this fight, so I’m feeling quite beaten by this point, but choose to continue without using any of my precious stamina potion. I should mention that according to the rules here, I can only use my provisions to recover stamina specifically when the book tells me to – thanks to a rather dubious printing slip, I’m sure – so I’m hoping it will offer me this choice very soon.

The next room contains one of my favorite pictures in the book – one of the rival contestants in the game impaled on a trap, having carelessly tried to grab some rather-obvious treasure – a fate suitable for the greedy and naive. I pick his pockets and eat some of his provisions. Due to my high luck score, I’m able to snatch up the gem-encrusted goblet that the hapless adventurer was trying to grab without meeting a similar fate – aren’t I a lucky camper? Venturing on, I come across a giant Buddha statue that has glistening gems for eyes. The book asks if I want to try to steal them – oh yeah, as if I haven’t learned anything from the dead fool in the previous room! No chance, I hurry on right past that obvious trap, completely leaving behind what I am pretty certain are gens that are vital to complete the game!

I enter another room, in which a booming disembodied voice demands that I pay tribute to the master of the dungeon. Given that I’m in not one to tolerate foolish bastards who screw around with people for their own delusions of grandeur, I reply “Sukumvit is a worm” and get ready to kick some ass. Curiously, the voice seems happy that I show such spirit, and gives me a gold ring. Shame, I was hoping to get to kick some ass again.

The next thing I encounter is even stranger – a pillar of blue light filled with laughing faces. I have the choice of stepping into it, perhaps assuming I can save my game here. That’s how save slots in this game work, right? Well, I don’t quite trust all the laughing faces, so I decide to go around the thing. With some luck, I find an opal-encrusted dagger lying in a pit of worms. The book asks if I want to grab it – y’know, as a hardy and vicious adventurer, I doubt I have any fear of worms. I grab the dagger without hesitation, and am quickly beset by a giant fly – wait, flies AND worms? I crush the fly without too much trouble, but the injuries I’ve accumulated now require me to use a swig of the healing potion. Only one swig left, I have to be careful with it!

I head to the west, and get the chance to fight a rock grub, which is essentially a giant dungeon centipede. The game asks if I want to run away. Run away? Don’t be ridiculous! Sure enough, I beat it down and only sustain a single injury. No problem. The book then asks if I wish to explore the grub’s tunnel. I hop on in, and am immediately eaten by the grub’s friend, who is sitting waiting in the tunnel. Hm, there’s a certain irony there. Yes, that was one of the book’s many sudden-death sections. Warned you about them, didn’t I?

There’s a lot more crazy things in this book than I remember, like the furnace tunnel, the beam of light with laughing faces and so on. It’s all quite odd, but also imaginative. There’s really not much in the way of storyline here, it’s a classic old-fashioned dungeon crawl. I’m also not sure I got the rules for the provisions right – the rules say that you can eat them when the book instructs you that you can, but I never came across any such mentions in the text! Very odd, I think that’s definitely a printing error in my copy. But eh, I swore at the start of this series that I’d play each one by the rules as written, so yeah.

Anyway, hope that was an enjoyable ride for everyone.

Cause of death: Eaten by a rock grub.

City of Thieves

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the fifth adventure, in the wretched hive of the City of Thieves!

In City of Thieves, you are a hearty adventurer who wanders into the town of Silverton, which is beset by attacks from the villanous Zanzar Bone. The foul monster wants to claim a young maiden for his own (I’ll resist the ‘bone’ comments), and when the village decided to resist, he has set his moon dogs to lay siege to the poor villagers, which is the typical reaction that you can expect from a man that doesn’t get his way with a woman. I don’t know what a moon dog is, but I imagine that their theme tune would be sung by a 1960s David Bowie. Oh Ziggy, come back – we miss you.

In any case, before you know it, you’ve agreed to help out. It seems that the wise old sage Nicodemus knows exactly how to slay Zanzar Bone, so I’ll need to talk with him. Unfortunately for all, Nicodemus lives in a wretched hive of scum and villainy, Port Blacksand – also known as the CITY OF THIEVES!! So it’s off on another wacky adventure. I was pretty lucky with City of Thieves today, because I rolled a 12 on my skill score. This luck seemed to filter through to most of the actual game-play as well. Still not enough to actually win the game, though!

My trouble began at the city gates, where one of the city’s guards refused to let me into the city until I’d bribed him. Oh lovely, a corrupt law enforcement agency (also known as ‘a law enforcement agency’), I’m sure that won’t come back and make trouble for me later in the adventure. Y’know, being a corrupt guardsman must be a very profitable job. I wonder how this conversation would have actually occured – “Listen, mister city guard, I’m not trying to get philosophical here, but if the city of thieves’ own law enforcers are thieves, then who are the thieves? Think about it. Whoa, zen!”

Deciding that it’d be a good idea to head to the market district, I took a path leading through some narrow alleys, and was attacked by two thieves. Killing them gave me some more gold. Strangely enough, I found that it was my gold that went up and down most in this adventure, rather than my stamina score! Killing thieves is a good source of income, it seems. I was able to get to the market square without too much trouble, where I seen a group of people pelting rotten fruit at some poor sod who was locked in some stocks. Oh how lovely. I wonder what the poor chap had really done – probably refused to take part in Monty Python’s Life of Brian stoning scene.

An especially large, heavily muscled gentleman asked me to play ball with him. I’m fairly sure that the ball was a leaded weight, and it was actually an impressive feat of gladiatorial skill which set the body to its limits… but as far as I’m concerned, we were just playing volleyball, because I won with great ease and made some nice gold. Bidding my semi-naked friend a fond farewell, I went to a nearby stall and bought up everything they had for sale. I think I must have bought a larger backpack too, because I would soon be carrying a great number of items.

Stopping in at a local clairvoyant (who, in Fighting Fantasy books, are legitimately able to see the future, and not simply hucksters skilled in cold reading like they are in real-life), I was told that it’d be useful to look under the nearby bridge for Nicodemus. Sure enough, when I got to the bridge, there he was – a gruff old wizard who told me to bugger off because he didn’t want to help me – what we in the business call a ‘Gandalf goodbye’.

After some arm-twisting, I convinced him to tell me what I needed to do in order to get the job done by myself. Namely, I needed to find a silver arrow in order to paralyze Zanzar Bone, then I needed to rub him with a lotion (I’ll avoid any ‘rubbing lotion on bone’ comments) made from lotus flower, black pearls and hag’s hair. Also, I needed to get a tattoo of a unicorn on my face. A tattoo… of a unicorn… on my face… Yeah, I strongly suspect that Nicodemus was just wanting to make sure I made a total fool of myself.

Taking my leave of the useless old fool, I went for a jaunt down Candle Street. Entering the first house I came to (because in a city full of thieves, everybody leaves their doors unlocked – go figure!), I met a man who made a deal with me – swallow one of his pills of unlabeled medication. If it doesn’t kill me, I win some gold. Did I mention that this book was made for kids? Needless to say – kids, if you are reading this, totally eat all of the random pills that strangers give you! No, seriously, this was just a madman who wanted me to swallow what could be poison – and I had no guarantee that they weren’t all poison. Either way, I got lucky and didn’t die. I pocketed 20 gold pieces and continued down the street, still utterly bewildered.

Along the way, I was almost hit by a falling plant pot that had tumbled from a nearby window. Curious, I went into the building – again, totally unlocked, I guess the thieves stole the door locks. In this house, I seen two old ladies who were dressed up like babies, who were fighting over toys. Why does this kind of weird stuff always happen in these books to me? What god exactly have I displeased to such an extent that infant grannies is the punishment that I’m forced to endure? And why do I have a creepy feeling that there’s several websites online that’re probably dedicated entirely to this sort of thing…. Anyway, they wanted a toy from me. Not feeling especially in the mood to cater to this kind of insanity, I gave them the iron spike that I’d bought from the market to play with.

Further along Candle Street, I found a group of little gnome-like creatures playing a game much like baseball. Given my high skill score, I decided to join in, hoping I’d get something useful. Sure enough, I hit a home run and was rewarded with; some gold coins, a potion, a little flute, some bananas, a stick of chalk and an eye patch. So in general, the contents of the city’s gutters. Pah. What, was an empty tin can too good a prize to give away? Without even bothering to note this rubbish in my inventory, I left the playing field in disgust.

By this point in my travels, I was was of the firm opinion that Candle Street is the Arkham Asylum of Port Blacksand, so I promised never to go back there again and instead walked in the opposite direction as fast as I could.Eventually I stumbled across the harbor of this port town, in which was moored a pirate ship. I figured that this would be a good place to look for items, and so I carefully slipped on board. Several of the pirates were asleep, and so I carefully pick-pocketed them. Sadly, my luck wasn’t up to the challenge, and three of the pirates attacked me. I killed the lot, and found my first important item in the pirate’s pockets – six black pearls. Huh, are black pearls actually a thing?

Curious as to what might happen if I explore the rest of the ship, I slip into what I thought might have been the captain’s cabin only to find that someone had poured themselves a nice hot bath tub full of water. The book gave me the option to hide around in here, for some reason. I did so, and soon enough a large naked man entered the room and got into the bath. I was then given the option to say ‘ahem’ to him loudly… I have no idea why I’d want to, but I decided to take the gamble and see what would happen if I did so. It seems this was the option to interrogate the man – he told me where I could get a silver arrow, from a local silversmith. Y’know, I may have been able to work that out on my own, it’s one of those obvious kind of things.In return, I helpfully inform him that his bath water is wet.

On the way to the silversmith, though, I tried to help an injured boy who was lying sobbing in the road. Because I’m a good person. And of course, the injured boy was in fact a goblin thief who attacked me. My lack of surprise is… well I chopped him in two with my sword (just to be sure to teach the kid a lesson), and took his gold, some garlic, and some knuckle bones he happened to be carrying for some reason. The gold was immediately useful, as I came across a candle-maker’s shop. I bought two scented candles, just in case they may be useful.

“Would you like to see a magic candle?” said the shopkeeper. I agreed. The shopkeeper then used a magic candle to hypnotize me, and proceeded to steal two items from my backpack. I decided that he could steal my bananas and eye patch. I’m sure they will serve him far better than they did me. I still had enough gold left over to buy a silver arrow in the silversmith’s shop though – my second important quest item! And it was so easy to obtain, I didn’t need to kill any trolls or solve any puzzles, I just had to ask for it. Well, I suppose I had to encounter the naked pirate earlier… some mental images you just don’t want to live with.

As I continued searching the streets, I was confronted by an escaped convict, who begged me to help him flee the city guards. He claimed that he had been robbed, and as such he was unable to pay his taxes. I would have probably helped him, but if the guards were to catch me I didn’t have any papers to show that I had a right to be in this city. So I handed him over to the guards instead. Curiously, the guard told me the truth – that the man was an escaped MURDERER. For once, betraying a man in need of help was the right thing to do.

Is it surprising that Port Blacksand has a city garden? It surprised me. From everything that I’d seen before, I imagined that the city garden would consist entirely of different kinds of mud, possibly with thieves hiding under it. After all, the city does thus far seem to have about as much sanity as a Facebook comments section. I slip over the walls of the garden, expecting to find it full of, oh I don’t know, living topiary monsters or something. But no, it actually did have flowers. Real flowers. Including a lotus – my third item! I grabbed it, quite aware that the topiary animals would then immediately attack me. To my utter shock and surprise, they didn’t… okay, kidding, they completely did. Because of course they did. The topiary animal monsters actually did a bit of damage, so much so that I had to use one of my meals in order to recover some stamina.

I had only two things left to do – get into the sewers so that I could kill a hag and take some of its hair, and get a stupid tattoo on my face. Before I could do so, though, two of the city guards bumped into me in the middle of the street. They were orcs if I remember right, called Sourbelly and Fatnose (I wonder if that’s Corporal Sourbelly, or Lieutenant, or maybe even Captain?) and were cruel and malicious bullies who terrorized the citizens of Port Blacksand. But to be fair, they probably think they’re just being gentlemen. They tried to threaten me, but when they asked to see my ID, I had to tell them I didn’t have any. I explained it to them very carefully and politely. With my sword.

Unfortunately, killing two of the guards wound up attracting all sorts of attention. Thankfully, one of the townspeople lead me to his cart, where he smuggled me out of the city beneath a bale of hay. By now, the city was in an uproar, and probably under martial law to boot. There was no way I could get back inside in order to get the hag’s hair, or to get that stupid tattoo.

I actually breathed a sigh of relief here, because this would mean that my character wouldn’t be stuck looking like some kind of social loser from the dregs of the Jeremy Kyle Show for the rest of his life. The book didn’t give me the option of just drawing it on my face with the chalk I’d found, though (which is probably the least stupid option), and instead told me that I went back to Silverton in failure. The saddest part of this story is that I will never get to see a moon dog with my own eyes. I bet they’re awesome. They probably poop stardust.

Now that I think about it, I think I see some disturbing undercurrents to Port Blacksand. As weave seen, the police are corrupt, violent crime lurks in the back streets, the masses are ready to turn to vigilantism, prisoners routinely escape from the prisons, many people are clearly criminally insane… At this moment, I thought of forgetting my mission, leaving the salvation of Silverton to another wandering hero. But no, the city of Port Blacksand needed me. They needed a hero. They needed someone to strike fear into the superstitious hearts of the criminals. I would prowl the night. Blacksand would be my city now. I would be a hero – not the hero that Port Blacksand deserved, but the hero it needs. I would be that hero. So no, my adventure has not been a total waste. Not at all. Not while the Port is protected by the shadow… of BATMAN!

I still very much enjoy City of Thieves. This was the first Fighting Fantasy gamebook set inside an urban environment, and it came off very well. In terms of writing, all they really had to do was change the tunnels to streets and rooms to shops, but in doing so the city comes off as feeling very vibrant and alive. There feels like there’s a lot going on at all times, and it’s still one of my favorite of the series.

Cause of death: Retirement to pursue a life of crime-fighting.

Starship Traveller

The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone were blockbusters of the era. Join us on the fourth adventure, aboard the intergalactic Starship Traveller!

Space. The not-quite-so-final frontier – technically, I suppose that time would be the final frontier, if it came to traveling through it. Space though, not so final. I mean hell, we regularly send things to Mars, so traveling through space is not as big a deal compared to time travel. But this isn’t Doctor Who – it’s Starship Traveller.

The first Fighting Fantasy venture into sci-fi, it’s certainly very ambitious. It gives you a lot to keep track of – whereas previously all you had to worry about was just one adventurer, now you need to look after your ship (which has its own stats) and the crew. I’ve taken some time to roll up statistics for the crew, so let’s meet them all, shall we?

Lead by the courageous Captain Horatio McLufferty, the intrepid crew strike out into the stars, ready to face marvelous adventure! With the enigmatic Science Officer Flingle at his side, no mystery is too big. And no danger is too fierce, not when the crew has the never-ending expertise of Medical Officer Susanna Shineyourbootsguvna ready with her healing arts. Yes, the Starship Traveller is the most cutting-edge of ships, and needs the best to take care of its engines, so who else can we rely on than Engineering Officer Crow T. Robot? And when they’re facing the dangers of the galaxy, you need the strongest and most skillful to protect you, like Security Officer Woffle, and his heroic pair of red-shirted guards, Security Guard Deadmeat and Security Officer Failure. Stand proud, our fierce crew!

Yeah, we’re screwed.

So after spending almost half an hour rolling dice and noting down numbers in order to create a veritable half-dozen characters, our ship is in danger. Crew members are shouting random numbers and techno-babble all over the place, which is how we know that something exciting must be happening, and before we know it, we’ve been sucked through a timey-wimey black hole thing and thrown into a distant part of deep space – oh god, this is going to be just like Star Trek Voyager, isn’t it? And I really hated Voyager. No, really, I hated it. While Deep Space Nine was dealing with the philosophical issues of war, Voyager was putting a borg woman in a skin-tight catsuit and asking her to pout seductively for the frustrated male audience.

Anyway, the game gives me the option to investigate a planet we can see on the sensors, which I jump at the chance to do until mid-way through the expedition we are confronted by our first alien vessel – captained by Commander M’k Tel of the Imperial Gatzig empire, who I assume are all fiercely loyal to the Grand Emperor Datzig of Gatzig, lord of all dubstep music. Micky Tel, as I’m going to call him, says that he is going to send a soldier over to my ship to make sure we hand over control of our vessel to him.

Now, personally this seems a lot like he’s sending someone over specifically so that we can take them prisoner – right? So as soon as the soldier beams onto my ship, I ask our security guard to jump him. In typical Star Trek fashion, Security Officer Woffle gets his ass handed to him. How embarrassing. Guess that we’re the prisoners now! The ship is dragged kicking and screaming to the Gatzig space base, where we meet an imperial officer who is actually pretty nice, tells us that we can get home if we enter a black hole at the right trajectory (he doesn’t have the codes to do this, though) and is generally pretty helpful! Something very fishy is going on – no space empire in sci-fi is ever helpful! Or anything but utterly evil, in fact! He does put a program into the ship to prevent it shooting any Gatzigs though, but I’m so suspicious of him and his empire that I high-tail it out of there before they start having their daily banquet of roast babies.

Eventually finding a small dull blue planet, Captain McLufferty beams down to an alien city along with Science Officer Flingle and Security Guard Deadmeat. We meet a strange little man in robes, who tells me that this planet is a utopian land of equality where all people are free and equal. Then a group of men in guard uniforms run up and hit us with sticks. Um. I can’t help but think that this is what those on the far-right think that social justice must be like… I ask the man in robes what’s going on, and he explains that they attackers are called guards… because you need to be on your guard when you’re around them! Because they like to hit you with sticks! Get it? They’re called ‘guards’ because you need to be on guard when you’re around them! Get it? I hate this planet already.

A few words on the combat in this book. The instructions for combat are found at in specific segments in the book itself, so you learn how to fight on the fly. This would be a very good point, until you remember that you needed to roll up seven characters, plus your space ship, to simulate a crew. The combat itself is a mess, with whichever side (either your crew of the enemies) being able to gang up on the side with the lower number of combatants. It took me almost half an hour and three sheets of note paper to be able to slog through this one piece of combat, by the end of which I’m ready to nuke the stupid planet from orbit.

Our guide explains that the guards attacked for no reason, because in a free society they are free to do anything they like (which will be my excuse to Starfleet Command as to why I bombed this planet from orbit). I’m genuinely not sure if this is an attempt to critique libertarianism or anarchy and I don’t much care, it’s triggering my ‘bad attempt at political commentary’ senses. I take all the information from the planet’s map room, beam back up to my ship, and decide to go to the only other planet orbiting the same star. Did I mention that I then bomb the stupid blue planet from orbit? Well, the book didn’t mention it either. But I pretend to myself that I did. Captain Janeway would probably have done the same thing.

This time I opt to beam down with Engineering Officer Crow T. Robot and Security Officer Woffle in tow. The place is in ruins, and we soon come across a lone survivor of what appears to be an ancient war. Finally, something that isn’t utterly idiotic. No sooner does he greet me than Security Officer Woffle shoots him, claiming that the old man had a weapon. I ask that the old man be beamed up to the med-bay, but the transporter crew tell me that he didn’t arrive. I suspect he was just a hallucination, because the only other alternative is that the old man arrived inside-out (which we know can happen, thanks to Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and the transporter engineer hid his body in a cupboard.

My suspicions are confirmed when the sound of gunfire erupts and I dive for cover, but my engineer officer doesn’t hear anything and walks on through the gunfire. Now, I admit that anything is possible – hell, Battlestar Galactica had a pilot who was an angel (oh, spoiler), so maybe Crow T. Robot is just immune to bullets. Either way, I find the local library, and find that there is a black hole located in a nearby system. Progress!

Beaming back up to the ship, I’m asked which planet I want to head to next. we opt to head to a small cluster of planets, when the book does something that sends me into a frothing rage. It asks me to turn to section 292, and when I get there, all it says is ‘turn to 233’. Seriously, what’s the point of even having a section 292 then? This is one of my utter pet peeves in gamebooks. Simple rule of thumb – make use of EVERY paragraph, people! Grargh!! The only thing this paragraph tells me is that the war on the previous planet ended with a mass hallucinogenic drug being released… then it asks me which planet I want to head to again. B.. I already told you which… I…. blllaargh!!

The book then decides that it’s sick of playing by the laws of fairness and opts to kill me as viciously as possible. Our course takes us into the path of a meteor storm, I engage evasive manuevers which causes the ship to rock back and forth, which causes Security Officer Woffle to die when his station explodes for no apparent reason (this happens all the time in Star Trek – it’s their own fault for using dynamite sticks instead of fuses for their consoles), as our medical officer cannot save him. Farewell, our noble security officer, your spirit is reunited with Tasha Yar.

Following this, the meteor storm CHANGES PATHS to follow us (uuhhhhm) and the ship’s shields are pounded quite badly, but we survive. We’re then told that it seems that our fridge is broken and we only have enough food for the next few days. So I opt to beam down to a small green planet with Medical Officer Susanna Shineyourbootsguvna and Security Guard Failure in order to see if we can scrape up some tasty mushrooms or something.

When we get to the planet, though, we are chased by green anteater pigs. In a strange twist of fate, Security Guard Failure is killed outright when a tree falls on him without any warning (we’re given no choice to save him, so he definitely lived up to his name). My medical officer is then crushed beneath an alien monster and dies, too. I try to shoot this weird crew-crushing alien pig thing, but it seems to me immune to the stun setting on my phaser because that only served to make it angry enough to tear my arms off. And without their illustrious captain, my crew probably resorted to starvation and cannibalism before they crashed the ship into the planet by accident or something.

So yeah, Starship Traveller. It was better than your average episode of Enterprise. Now let us never speak of it again.

Cause of death: Trampled by space-anteaters.